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Hunger is a normal and essential function of being a human (or any animal for that matter). Hunger drives us to eat food, which we need to survive. If we don’t eat enough food to satisfy our hunger, a whole bunch of weird things can happen. Take the famous food deprivation study conducted by Dr. Ancel Keys during World War II. The purpose of the study was to understand how to refeed people after a famine. Thirty-two healthy, young and robust men first ate whatever they wanted for three months, averaging around 3500 calories/day. Then for six months, the men’s calories were restricted to more than half that amount, about 1500 calories/day, in order to lose on average about 25% percent of their body weight.

And the effects of this calorie restriction, or semi-starvation, included:

Significant decrease in metabolic rate.

Increase in food obsessions and cravings - the men would talk about food all the time and collect recipes.

Extreme eating behaviours i.e. eating really fast or taking a super long time to eat, playing with their food.

Many men failed to stick to the restricted calorie intake and experienced episodes of bulimia, overeating or binging on foods.

Some men exercised more just to be able to eat more.

Mood changes, such as increased apathy, irritability, moodiness and depression.

Then once the men were allowed to eat normally again, they reported intense feelings of hunger and never feeling satisfied after eating. Even after eating enough calories for the day, they found it hard to stop eating. It wasn’t abnormal to eat upwards of 8 to 10 thousand calories in a weekend! It took many months for the men to normalize their eating again, some up to 8 months. You can read more details about this study, here and here (as well as in the Intuitive Eating books).

Though this study would never be replicated again due to ethical problems, it gave us great insight into the power of biological hunger. These were healthy, psychologically fit men with no previous mental health or eating issues. And they were put on a 1500 calorie diet for six months and suddenly all these problems happened.

In the study this was called “semi-starvation”, but in the modern health world, that would be called a “diet”.Though this study was not about weight-loss or dieting, the men displayed behaviours not unlike what is seen when women and men go on restrictive meal plans or diets.

When the men could start to eat normally again, called the “re-feeding period”, I think is especially important to understand. Never feeling satisfied, feeling out of control with eating and eating way past normal fullness are all natural reactions to periods of calorie restriction.And I think anyone who has either consciously or unconsciously restricted their food intake for a period of time can relate to this.

Have you ever had such a busy day that you didn’t have much time to eat and then you come home and you feel like you want to eat your whole fridge? Or maybe you’ve tried following a meal plan or specific diet all week and then find yourself breaking all the rules and stuffing yourself with all the “bad” foods on the weekend? This is most likely your body’s reaction to calorie restriction.

Overeating, binging, intense food cravings, and out of control eating behaviours, is not about a lack of willpower. It’s often because you have been ignoring your biological hunger and underfeeding your body. The more you deny and ignore your biological hunger, the more intense your food cravings and obsessions can become.

Also, an important thing to note: Ever notice that when you’re really hungry or you’re craving foods, you probably won’t think first of protein-rich foods, i.e. chicken breast or eggs? Nor would you want to eat pure fat,i.e. like butter or olive oil. It’s usually foods high in carbohydrates (a.k.a. carbs). Bread, pasta, chocolate, candy, ice cream, chips and fries. There is often fat in these foods too, but usually carbs are the main thing we’re craving. And there’s a biological reason for that: carbohydrates are the preferred source of energy and fuel for our body and brain. So if the body has been under any calorie restriction or food deprivation (a.k.a dieting), there are neurochemical and hormonal responses that will drive you to seek carbohydrates. Again, this is not about lack of willpower or control, this is about biology. As much as you might try, you can’t fight biological hunger (in Intuitive Eating, this is called “primal hunger”).

This is why dieting and/or restricting calories usually backfires- your body doesn’t like to be under-fueled and underfed, and it especially doesn’t like not knowing when it’s going to be fed again (i.e. chaotic eating patterns or unpredictable eating patterns).

Another way understand why it’s not good to ignore biological hunger is this: Think about when you have to go to the bathroom. Your bladder feels full and other sensations in your pelvic floor area are telling you that you need to go. May you can “hold it in” for a period of time, but you know that soon enough you’re going to have to get to a bathroom! Needing to urinate is a normal and important biological function that we know we need to listen to. Yet, with hunger, we often ignore it or don’t take it as seriously as other biological functions. And when hunger does feel “urgent” and turns into an overeating or binge episode, dieters will often blame themselves for not having enough willpower. But really this “urgent” hunger is just your body telling you that it’s biologically hungry and it needs to be fed more on a regular basis.

Dieters try to fight biology, using “mind over matter”. But this will never work in the long run. Because our bodies are so smart and they will do everything it can to survive (i.e. crave carbs, overeat and binge). All that being considered, I don’t think it’s extreme what Tribole & Resch, (2012) state, that “A dieting body is a starving body” (p.59). Therefore, understanding what hunger feels like for you and learning to listen to and respect it, is a very important part of getting out of the dieting and restrict-overeat cycle.

Moreover, not only does chronically not honoring your biological hunger increase the likelihood of overeating and binge-eating episodes, it also increases the likelihood that you will stop hearing your hunger signals, unless they are screaming at you (i.e. ravenous). Equating hunger with being ravenous (and therefore overeating), continues to perpetuate your dis-trust around food. Because now in your mind, intense hunger = overeating. Therefore hunger = bad. That hunger is not be trusted.

But there are actually many levels of hunger and not all of them will drive overeating behaviours. The problem with chronic dieting is that it can mute the more subtle forms of hunger and you only become aware of intense hunger. So a big part of Intuitive Eating is learning to identify what the different levels of hunger mean to you and knowing when it’s time to listen to and honor it, not only to prevent out of control eating later on, but to give you enough energy for your daily activities, as well as enough mental satisfaction (i.e. you don’t want to always be thinking about food).

Before I get into how to start tuning into your biological hunger, here are a few things identified in Intuitive Eating that can interfere with hunger or “silence” it:

Numbing - This is when you try to shut down sensations of hunger by using “diet” tricks, like drinking calorie-free or diet beverages, coffee or tea, drinking lots of water, or eating an enormous amount of vegetables or fruit. These things can create a temporary feeling of physical fullness because your stomach expands, but it won’t truly satisfy your biological hunger, because you’re not eating enough calories.

Dieting- Restricting foods or purposely ignoring hunger signals because you’re trying to lose weight, can over time silence your hunger signals all together. It is not unheard of that people with anorexia have trouble identifying what hunger feels like.

Chaos - If you’re always super busy or stressed out, you may not notice hunger sensations. Stress actually can suppress hunger. But then when stress decreases, you will probably feel hungry again, even ravenous, because your body wants to compensate for any underfeeding that happened.

Skipping breakfast - Often people skip breakfast because they don’t feel hungry or are trying to lose weight. So they might stop feeling hungry in the morning. But come dinner time, they may become ravenous and end up eating past comfortable fullness. This then leads to not feeling hungry in the morning again, and the vicious cycle of restrict-overeat continues.

Certain medications or mental health or physical illnesses may interfere with your ability to feel biological hunger. In these cases, it’s really important to understand the idea of “nourishment as self-care”, another concept of Intuitive Eating. Basically this means that if for whatever reason it is very challenging for you to tune into your hunger signals, you still make sure to eat, even if you don’t feel hungry, to make sure you’re getting enough nutrition and energy for your needs.

Intense exercise or physical activity may temporarily suppress hunger. It’s not that you have to eat right away after exercising, but it’s probably a good idea to eat something substantial within a couple hours of exercising, especially if you haven’t eaten for a while, to prevent that primal hunger creeping up on you later.

OK, so how do you actually start honoring your biological hunger?

The first step is understanding that your body has a biological need for food and energy, and that ignoring this need can have negative physical and psychological consequences, as explained above. Your brain and body need to know that it’s not starving or being deprived of food, on a regular basis. To make your body feel safe and secure, you need to feed it enough food consistently. Your body doesn’t know there’s a Starbucks on every corner. If you haven’t eaten enough throughout your day or haven’t eaten in a long time (it’s generally recommended not to go more than 5 hours without eating), your body will let you know. So first, decrease the chances of overeating or binging by making sure you’re just eating enough and eating consistently.

Second, start listening and increasing your awareness of your hunger signals. Every time you eat, ask yourself, “Am I hungry? What’s my hunger level?” OR “When was the last time I ever felt hungry? How did my stomach feel? How did my mouth feel?”

Hunger symptoms can include but are not limited to:

Mild gurgling or gnawing in the stomach

Growling noises

Light-headedness

Difficulty concentrating

Uncomfortable stomach pain

Irritability

Feeling faint

Headache

Thinking of food​

One tool that Intuitive Eating is widely recognized for is the Hunger/Fullness Discovery Scale. It’s a scale from 0-10 that helps you rate your level of hunger before, during and after a meal. Here are what the numbers mean:

It is generally recommended to eat when you’re at about a 3 or a 4, to try to prevent you feeling like a 2 or a 1. This scale is totally subjective and there is no right or wrong way to use it.It’s simply one tool to increase awareness of your hunger sensations and maybe notice any patterns of eating that are not serving you. For example, if you notice that every time you eat you’re at a 2 or a 1, often resulting in a binge, then you can start to try to honor your hunger when it’s at a 3 or 4 and see if that helps you become more in control of your eating.

Overall, the main goal of honoring your hunger, is to be less afraid of hunger, understand that it’s a normal and biological function, and that listening to and respecting it consistently, will help prevent unhealthy or destructive eating behaviours.

Please note: Often Intuitive Eating is misinterpreted as the “hunger-fullness” diet. Like, just eat when you’re hungry and stop when you’re full. Though learning to tune into and honor your hunger and fullness (another principle we’ll get into later) is an important part of Intuitive Eating, this is just a part of the whole model. It is not to be turned into a rigid rule.

For example, even though it is generally recommended to try to eat mostly when you’re biologically hungry (before you’re ravenous), here may be other times you eat, which in Intuitive Eating is identified as other “voices” of hunger.

Other types of hunger (other than biological hunger):

Taste hunger - This is when you eat because the food just looks good or a social occasion or event calls for it (i.e. weddings, birthdays, holidays...etc). It’s totally OK to eat for these reasons and is not a big deal to an Intuitive Eater.

Practical hunger- Wouldn’t it be great if you could just stop what you’re doing when you’re hungry and eat, all the time? Unfortunately in a world around schedules and deadlines, that can’t always be the case. So practical hunger is understanding that you might need to eat at times, even if you’re not hungry at the moment, because you know you won’t be able to eat for a while (e.g. you only have half an hour to eat in between work and an evening event). Practical hunger is essentially planning ahead, which again, can prevent overeating later.

Emotional Hunger - I will talk way more about this in Principle #7 , but for now, it’s important to understand that once you can identify and honor primal or biological hunger, it will become easier to identify why you want to eat. Often people attribute out-of-control eating and cravings to “emotional eating”, when really they were just not honoring their hunger on a regular basis. Once you start honoring your biological hunger, emotional eating might even disappear without you even trying. But sometimes, even if you start honoring your biological hunger, you might also start noticing all the times when you eat for other reasons, other than hunger i.e. emotional, distractions, boredom...etc. And in Intuitive Eating, eating for other reasons other than hunger can still be OK, but generally you also want other ways to deal with your emotions too.

The main takeaways about Honor Your Hunger are:

Do not freak out when you notice hunger. It’s just your body telling you it needs energy.

Start noticing what hunger feels like to you, in a non-judgmental way. You can use the Hunger/Fullness Discovery Scale above or ask yourself these questions: What does being hungry feel like to you? Do you often wait to eat until it’s too late (ravenous)? Are you still hungry after a meal? Do you tend to skip meals?

Starting to listen to and honoring your biological hunger is the first step in getting off the restrict-overeat cycle, trusting your body around food, and feeling in true control of your food choices and behaviours.

Stay tuned next week as I’ll be delving deeper into the third principle of Intuitive Eating: Make Peace With Food.

ReferencesTribole, E. & Resch, E. (2012) Intuitive Eating: A Revolutionary Program That Works New York, NY: St. Martin’s Press

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Author

Danielle Lithwick M.A., founder of Move Out Of Madness, delivers in-home personal training, online personal training and intuitive eating coaching, in Ottawa, ON and worldwide. And especially loves calisthenics training and carbs. Read more about her here. **This blog is for educational and informational purposes only and is not intended to replace medical advice. See full disclaimer here.